Follow Jesus, Be a Heretic

Jesus is heretical. Don't mince it. And the reason why: He removes every reason for religion to exist. 

Every religion. 

He is spiritual, but illegal.

Merciful, as if God.

Wise, even in silence.

Above all, He is God who demands nothing and gives everything. His own Life, by His own will alone.

Religion has taught you that you must sacrifice. You must make legal amends for sins, but only in a certain way. It gives you a little check list of menial, small rules: don't touch this, pray like that, say this and that, eat this but not that, go to the place of worship, give your money, your time, give your life. 

And for those more zealous they tell you to go and convert or condemn your fellow humans, judge them, devalue them, displace them, persecute them, and finally $!11 them. No? Just look around you. From India to Gaza, from the Inquisition to the Crusades. It's a recurring, all too common theme.

Then you get Jesus: He comes and says, I make the sacrifice. I AM THE LAMB OF GOD AND GOD HIMSELF. What value is your religion? The religious leader of congregations, the gurus of the land, and shepherds of the community - their role might seem useful, but suddenly their edicts become weak, impotent and of little value.

Robes, saints and temples (and neo-religious wokeism), Jesus destroys their reason to exist with a simple word: Love God and love your adjacent fellow human as yourself. 

Whether Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem (that today daily witnesses Apartheid, Racism and Religious Extremism on par with a dystopian vision like Hunger Games), or whether he sat on a boat by the shores of Galilee's lake conversing with small scale fishermen, or whether He trekked through the foothills of Lebanon, a land of lost Israelites and their Canaanite cousins; He never once put up barriers between God and the humans around Him.

Religion is an expert at keeping you far from God. It excludes. It falsely exonerates those most far from God though they think of themselves as the opposite. It's a lie. Religion is the real meaning of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They ate its fruit and died.

And Jesus chopped it down. He is the Tree of Life. Sit at His roots, gaze at the Sun shining through its boughs reaching to the heavens, and listen to His words, the Wind of the Spirit rustling its healing, evergreen Leaves.

Jesus is Life. Eat of Him. And Live, finally.